The Truth About Hooking Up With Your Roommate

The roommate hookup, like an office affair, is often born out of boredom, curiosity, and proximity. And it could easily go awry. Heed these tales of housemate hookups gone bad before you start a roomie relationship.

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I banged my fist on the door. Behind it, I could hear a female voice giggling. "Are you in there, Sean*?" I yelled. I heard him shush her.

Oh, hell no, I remember thinking before I broke down his wooden bedroom door in a rage, slamming my whole body against it. The night ended with the girl storming out of the house in tears and Sean leaving to sleep at a friend's.

So how did I get to this unattractive moment? Sean and I had moved in together as roommates but quickly became more. By this point, we had split for a second time, deciding to be just roommates yet again (I'd broken up with him after hearing he was interested in another girl). Our other roommate was hosting her birthday party in the living room. I came in from outside and asked if anyone had seen Sean. There were uncomfortable glances exchanged. "What's up?" I asked. Everyone's eyes seemed to sweep over Sean's closed door.

That's when the world stopped. "Is he in there with a girl?" I asked. I don't remember if someone actually told me or if the silence clued me in, but I freaked out. How dare he bring someone into his room during a party he knew I was at? How dare he be with someone else in our home? In front of my face? What did she have that I didn't? How could he be so thoughtless?

When we'd first met on the student newspaper in college, I thought Sean was a brilliant genius and incredibly handsome. We'd signed a lease thinking our seamless ability to write and edit together would translate into a chill living situation. When we started hooking up soon after, we debated breaking the lease but decided we could casually date while living together. Because we were idiots. We spent the next two years hooking up on and off and making each other's home life a living hell.

For a while, it was nice to have someone to kiss and cuddle so nearby. We never had to take long train rides or brave Boston's snowy streets to see each other. We never fussed over who would spend the night at whose apartment. The sex was readily available and plentiful. We'd play house, cooking for each other and watching movies on the couch.

Soon though, Sean and I started fighting all the time. Because we lived together, the relationship was immediately all-or-nothing, do-or-die. If we sound intense, it's because we were forced to be. "The fact that roommates are so intimately in each other's space accelerates the relationship," says Andrea Syrtash, co-author of It's Okay to Sleep With Him on the First Date: And Every Other Rule of Dating, Debunked. "You may skip some necessary steps toward finding out if someone is right for you." Sean and I were like Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin in Bio-Dome, forced to be together 24/7 with nowhere to escape. We fought about things that other couples don't until years down the road: the dishes, the laundry, the vacuuming. These were the kinds of arguments a long-term couple can survive and a new one shouldn't be having.

Bedding your cohabitator seems like an obviously terrible idea, and yet, for some, it's like putting chunks of meat in front of a hungry lion. You watch your roomie towel off after a shower or cook shirtless and your mind wanders. You're around him all the time, you get along, he's there waiting when you get home from an awful date. It just seems inevitable. Especially on TV shows like New Girl, where Zooey Deschanel's Jess hooked up with her roommate Nick after seasons of sexual tension. But I didn't go awww along with the rest of the fans. I cringed. Because I know firsthand the idea is bad-news bears.

Beth S. came to that same realization when she found herself hiding naked in her bathtub, clutching her clothes to her chest. The 21-year-old student and her roommate Matt had become hookup buddies after she moved in with him and his sister. They'd agreed to keep their sexy romps a secret to avoid his sibling's disapproval. But one day, his sister came home early while Matt and Beth were getting hot and heavy with the door carelessly open. Matt threw Beth her boots and belt. She raced to the bathroom and crouched in the tub for 20 anxious minutes while his sister moved around the apartment. "I felt like the lover of a cheating husband," she says. "I felt awful."

That's because roommate relationships can go from hot to awful in accelerated dog years. With Sean, there was none of the magical mystery or healthy boundaries of a fledgling romance. We saw each other in the morning, hair askew and breath afoul. We saw each other after bad days when we needed time alone to unwind and not someone to fling our frustrations at, but that's exactly what happened. Even when Sean and I were "broken up," we acted out in each other's faces, turning the apartment into a toxic place. I snuck new paramours out the second-floor window to avoid confronting him downstairs. One time, I returned from a date, and he was irked by how good a time I'd had. It soured my mood.

Yet even though we desperately needed to split, we could never make it stick because of our sheer proximity. We were fighting and torturing each other, but we were still attracted to each other. We'd run into one another on the way to the bathroom and fall back into bed. We'd simply forget all the reasons we were so incompatible. Had we been two people just seeing each other, we could've quickly discerned that the relationship wasn't working, but I let a lot of deal-breakers — Sean's thoughtlessness, his hatred of my friends — slide because I didn't want the drama of moving out or to feel uncomfortable in my own home.

Maybe my experience has made me cynical. Kat N., 25, has dated only her roommates, and it's worked out well for her. During college, she dated her dormmate. After that, she moved to L.A. and dated her roommate there. Roommate hookups are "the joke of my life," she laughs. It's also worked out for Mary W., 26, from L.A., who fell head over heels for her roommate while she was living with him and (yikes!) her then-boyfriend. The fallout of that heated hookup caused her to lose friends and sanity, but she's still with the roommate to this day.

But both women acknowledge that to date your roommate is to dive headfirst into a relationship, which doesn't work for everyone. So if you're on the brink of a roomie relationship, what do you do? A cost-benefit analysis, says Syrtash. "If you're convinced this person is the potential love of your life, the risk may be worth it," she says. But the stakes are high. "The cost may be that you have to move suddenly and expensively or you're accelerating the dating process in a way that's unnatural." So if you just want a hookup and think your roommate looks sexy in sweatpants, you may want to reconsider.

For 24-year-old Lea I., her hookup cost her a happy living situation. The grad student in Ithaca, N.Y., started cuddling innocently with her roommate, even though they decided it wouldn't get serious. At one point, they agreed to stop hooking up, but like with Sean and me, it didn't last. One morning, she saw him come in after he'd slept at another girl's house. Then he brought the new girl over to have sex.

"It was miserable to feel like I couldn't be in my own apartment," Lea says. When they'd argue about it, "we'd have nowhere to go at the end of the night, so often it would end with me, in exhaustion, curling up in his arms." To end their dramatic relationship, Lea had to move out.

Syrtash says this kind of trauma can be avoided by having an open discussion before you do the deed, however unsexy it may be. "It's the last talk you'll feel like having, but you need to be open," she says. "Establish that this is a little risky, and talk about boundaries and expectations. If it doesn't work out, make a commitment in advance to respect each other."

As you know, Sean and I were anything but respectful in the end, and breaking down his door was hardly my finest moment. By the time we finally broke up, which took his moving out of state, we were utterly burned out on each other. We were like raw nerves, bristling at the mere mention of the other's name. To this day, I wish we never happened.

>> Do you truly like him or are you just bored and he's nearby and convenient?>> Hooking up with a roomie can make your living situation stressful and awkward. Worth it?>> If things break down, are you prepared to move out quickly (and in a huff)?

Still wanna do it?Know these truths.

>> You will have to see this person when you look like garbage, when you're wearing your retainer or pooping. They will be there, they will know, and it will not be sexy. There will be no mystery left.>> When you first start dating someone, you're not always exclusive, but you're also not living together and seeing him date other people. Have the conversation early on about whether or not you're exclusive.>> Create your own space. Have your own room, and spend time apart outside the apartment and especially inside it.>> Don't let having a hookup buddy at home keep you from looking for love elsewhere. It can make you lazy about finding a real relationship if you have easy sex waiting at home like a frozen pizza.>> Take it slow. Don't jump to acting married. Go on dates outside the apartment, and pee with the door closed.

What to do if it doesn't work out:>> Give the person space. Living together doesn't mean you have to be up on him 24/7 asking where he's been and who he was with.>> Find activities for yourself outside the house.>> Don't bring someone new home. That's just mean. If you've started dating someone else, go to his place in the beginning.>> Do your chores. Passive-aggressive hairs in the tub or dirty yogurt spoons in the sink don't send a very mature message.>> Look for a new place to live. If you're uncomfortable in your own home or making someone else miserable, it's going to get worse before it gets better. Break the lease.

This article was originally published as "How Not to Date Your Roommate" in the May 2014 issue of Cosmopolitan. Click here to get the issue in the iTunes store!